The day that shall forever be known as Jan 4th 2018 - Part 1

“Unfortunately, the captain has decided we’re unable to land at Basel due to heavy winds. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. We’ll update you once we have more information.”

The plane lurches to the right, the wings creak and groan almost as loud as the passengers.

I’m noticing my breathing, I’m noticing my heart pounding, thumping adrenaline through a body that’s letting it.

“Vipassana meditators aren’t afraid of death, as it comes they are trained to feel, here comes another sensation, arising, passing, and now another sensation, and another…” Goenka’s voice creates the baseline to a cacophony of shrill high pitched “What the fuck, it’s over pal, this is it, this is how you’re going out” shrieks.

I notice my fists are clenched, the small of my back is taught pulling strings in my Jaw. The muscles around my eyes are relaxed.

Hard to believe we even managed to take off from London given the pounding we took on the way up. How far are these gales stretching?

We’re pulling up through the storm and fear is the collective field.

We ascend violently through the worst waiting for more data.

“The captain has decided We’ll re-route to Geneva as the conditions in Basel have deteriorated.”

Half relief, half unknown. Safety first. Please don’t try Basel again. Are things really better in Geneva? Oh well, at least we get a break.

I start to wonder, if this was it, would I regret anything? Have I lived like I really wanted?

I don’t know. It’s complicated. I’ve never really been sure what I want or what I’m doing. I suppose I’d regret that I wish I’d gone for it more. Being stuck halfway is worse than not going for it at all.

Gone for what?

I don’t know, just like, you know fully gone for it?

It’s ambiguous at best. But I feel the pull of it.

Like put two feet into everything and been willing to fuck it up wholeheartedly until I drop through the bottom of it into a greater truth.

I kind of know what you mean. I guess it’s a practice.

Descent into Geneva begins.

“We’re sorry about the inconvenience of the rerouting, we’ll be doing everything we can to ensure you arrive safely in Basel once on the ground. On the plus side, the view coming into Geneva is beautiful” Chirps the PA, I look out the window at looming fog.

Lurch, followed by that bit of suspended animation where your stomach hasn’t caught up with gravity, the whole plane rattles and screams. Vomit splatters into paper bags.

The girls next to me pull their hoods up, moan and curl into one another.

Fireballs pummel through the cabin in my minds eye.

Jesus, this is really going to hurt. For some reason I hear and feel the way it would singe my beard.

I collapse through the bottom of fear and something rises in me.

Come on then! My animal brain is picking a fight with the weather, or God, or both.

It doesn’t know who it’s shouting to but my body pulses cold and perfectly poised, my breath regulates, the fight part of the fight or flight wants to fight the good fight on this flight.

This barbarian viking underbelly of my soul feels lightning shoot through it from the skies, while pulling up electricity from the earth below, the field widens and I’m more than just me.

You can land this fucking plane.

We’re being tossed around but my hands are the pilots, steady, firm and resolute.

You can land this plane.

Lurch, screams, rattle and vomit.

You can land this plane.

Descending deeper

Nearly at the runway

Rattle, screech

Time stops momentarily

Whooomph, the planes engines kick in and we’re powering up into the storm again.

Shit.

“As you’ve probably gathered the captain has decided to abort the landing again due to unmanageable conditions.”

The plane gets slammed between clouds as we ascend.

People’s guts empty.

Two failed attempts in two different locations.

Now panic is spreading like fever through the cabin. People are shaking, everybody is violently alive.

How many planes are there up here? How much fuel do these things pack? Is it like this all over Europe?? Where the fuck are we going to Land?!

I search for the viking but he’s gone quiet. I just want to get off the fucking plane now please. I’ve had enough.

Right, but you’re in this, you can’t. It isn’t an option. There’s no way down except down through all that shit again. Oh yea. And there’s absolutely nothing about this you can control.

The feeling of total powerlessness makes a quiet incision in my lungs and deflates everything.

Somewhere inside me I can hear a faint echo of something “if this is it this is it, might as well make peace now” OK great. Helpful. Glad it’s that simple.

The truth is always quiet.

“Unfortunately the conditions in Geneva have deteriorated as well!” Oh that old Geneva, what a jolly old tease! “The captain has decided we’re rerouting to Lyon. We’re sorry about the inconvenience, we have to put safety first here. Thank you for your patience and understanding.”

Sadness begins to pool up inside. Would I want people I love to know what they meant to me? No I think they do, I try to be as expressive as I can when it comes to that. I think I’ve done everything I could to be whatever I could, yet there’s still something missing. What is it? I don’t know what it is. It’s incomplete but I don’t know where the missing piece is…

I’m lost in melancholy and the plane is placid. People are coming to terms with whatever they’re feeling.

Suddenly the ground is close beneath us.

Oh shit! Lyon is calm! We’re going to make it!

A sense of relief and buoyed optimism seems to permeate the bodies of the passengers, it grows up the middle and sprouts into laughter and quick smiles as the plane feathers toward the ground.

Landing gear hits wet cement and is met with instantaneous rapture.

We fucking made it.

The tension melts into tears and hides itself behind my eyeballs while I make enough space to digest and internalise. I text someone special and apologize for any pain I might have initiated through my lack of awareness. As the light grows so does my capacity to destroy. Invoking the practice of responsibility and discernment. Still some catching up to do.

We wait in Lyon with hoards of other awkward travellers, feeding on scraps of information about our fate. We get herded along travelators, escalators, tunnels and bridges. At one point there’s nearly a pile up at the top of an escalator that threatens to spill people and luggage over the edge. I throw a couple of suitcases out the way and a crying child gets hauled to safety. People scowl inwardly. They don’t need this shit, they’ve had enough panic for one day. Their empathetic reserves are running low enough to threaten switching to the reserves of anger. We’re shepherded into an open sanctuary of coffee tables and round backed chairs. A bottomless line begins to assemble round the counter for muffins and hot drinks.

People start to unwind. Play cards, bond over the chaos while pummelling messages out on their phones. Speculation and rumours whip like winds through the mob. Every so often a bus appears in the distance and a mass exodus begins increasing in pace as it notices itself.

I’m still bothered. What am I missing? Is that it? Was that not real enough?

Continues tomorrow...

IDB on the Radio 📻

This is incredibly late notice, but there will be an IDB mix on the radio tonight, 12AM central Europe time. The radio station is new and experimental, which is probably why it's willing to take a punt on a pirate like myself. But we'll raise a glass to any and all exposure 😁 🍻

The whole thing transpired from a flash in the pan session near Geneva over the weekend where about 10 of us dove into some deep breathing and emotive soundscapes. Was a lovely weekend. Very touching to be welcomed there and receive such glowing feedback from the participants. Left feeling buoyed and inspired. Particularly by the meeting with Francois, who had ideas for the further development of the IDB soundscapes, like 3-d sound design, and live instrumental feeds.

Live mixing has been a direction we've been wanting to move into for a while as the creation of an IDB Mix involves a lot layering of sounds often with quite precise timing to create the effect they have on the brain and enhance the journey. So until now we've been premixing, to also allow more focus on the facilitation through touch etc. But the idea of a return to live mixing is an appealing one and would require an extra skill set.

But the other direction we had been discussing a week prior had been inner dance radio. A wavelength that could be broadcast to connect participants globally via one playlist. We'd been imagining people lying down in several different countries, or in small circles together to move through the journeys as one. Lo and behold, one week later, the chance to develop this is dropped in our laps. Sometimes there are signs that are too blatant to ignore.

And so the mix will aired tonight, like literally in a few hours, and you can find the stream here.

And you can like their Facebook page here.

The mix being broadcast is IDB waves, for those of you familiar with this work. For me this mix is very yellow. It's a solar plexus vibe, lots of strong music, powerful delta and confrontational shadows. But it's served me greatly in times of despondency. It was born from one of those times in particular and it gives energy to that tune.

So lie back and enjoy the waves! Literally and metaphorically. Except not literally. Unless you're somewhere on the beach or something. Then do whatever you want. But you probably should be doing that anyway. And anyway it's not really my business to tell you what to do so... But do give an independent French radio station a chance. It's actually really rather good!

👽 💚

ID Immersion reflections

...Draws a blank

What did happen over that weekend? There was some knowing that it was something. There was depth, there were tears, there was connection, there was brilliance and beauty, there was courage, there was nurture and there was laughter, streaks of joy as the spectrum came to light in all its wholeness. Of course this is why I'm here, how could it ever not have been?

It struck me halfway through the middle of the partner work, it was so obvious, our relationship with electricity and how it pulls matter into manifest, static, lurking in the unseen, waiting for the portal of empathetic connection to transform, kinetic, flow, transmuting, unlocking alchemy. That yes gateway, permissions in the depths of the dark self, the ugly stuff, the moody, angry, snarling, wailing and gnashing teeth of the trauma echoes, stuck in our fields, craving touch, attention, acknowledgement, permission to be part of the experience, held captive by denial in the frame of our imagined enlightened archetypes. "We are love, we are one, we are so spiritual." Untruth's collapsing into the heat of movement, sound, breath. Softening awareness into the dense space between the particles of the cerebellum. That's where it's at.

It all felt so personal. And yet it totally wasn't.

But what is processing on behalf of the collective field of consciousness? When the particles become waves, when selves collapse into one, the room is alive, "your stuff" becomes "the fields stuff" It's not about "the people" it's about nodes, antennas, receiving and transmitting information, a bundle of frequencies, willing in acquiesce to a higher order, a unified wavelength, closing loops and circuits with one another, completing cycles, washing away the build up of stagnant electricity held as a field of self and hitting fast forward on the evolution of the human organism.

That magic feeling, subtle in the ether, that ascends through your foot soles and trickles through your fingertips, lights up your eyes and gyrates through your crown, unfolding the heart space when you enter a room full of dance.

Can our deepest held beliefs, thought's and emotions really be as benign as patterns of light held together in an electromagnetic field? And when fields merge through the ancient language of sound, movement, breath, in this communion an information loop opens. "They're ready", it says, and life force begins to surge through them pulsing their bodies, waving their hands. Expressing it's agenda, much more complete than any personal narrative carried in by each. And they give themselves to it, a greater intelligence, that organised a body into a symbiotic relationship with an environment, as a total organism. And they feel again, real, alive, one. They remember, and this contributes to the dynamism of a new collective identity.

It's so simple in that space. As the one looks through the lens of many selves, creating a reality from quantum soup through the filters of the senses. What is sees, changes.

Oh. It was that. Well, that's not something I didn't already know. But I couldn't see it. So it was forgotten. But now I do. I suppose that's how it goes.

Too much mountain air.

Check back in again another time.

An unbridled sense of gratitude for the weekends activity and all its wonderful participants.

If you're interested in one of these orgiastic romps through consciousness, the next retreat coming up I think is in Paris in February? (TBC) Then a longer deeper dive come March in the Alps by the lake. Hot/cold therapy, deep breathing, sound journeys, introspective dance, deep connection and all that jazz.

Stay tuned for more.

The centre is coming along nicely. Floorboards being pinned, walls being insulated, and sawdust in my beard. Which looks as ridiculous as it sounds. The thing about having a beard is that it begins to take on a life of its own. It reaches out for food that tumbles off the spoon, it engulfs whole pencils. it hides secrets. But its a part of letting go of control. Surrender to the flow of hair that pushes itself daily from my chin with admirable determination and consistency. Perhaps I can learn something from it before the next cull.

Happy hibernation everyone

❤️ ❄️